Not every engineering problem can be solved. It may be that full electrics will never be successful highway vehicles. But consider all the urban applications that can eliminate emissions at their most concentrated and obnoxious.
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But the competition from natural gas is severe.

If you look at current research you will find that the sulfur silicon battery will be commercially available in the next 2 to three years and have an energy density 5 times of current batteries. Look at the research of scientists like yu cui

Use of the phrase “squeaky-clean exhausts” can be very misleading. Batteries do not produce any energy. Like gas tanks they are storage containers that consume energy and produce Green House Gases (GHG) by manufacturing them. The sun doesn’t discriminate by location of tail pipes. The EPA measures emissions of the U.S. electricity grid at 1.6 pounds of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour. When line losses and AC/DC charger conversion efficiencies are considered the real number is about 1.8 lbs/kWh. Assuming the EPA Tesla-S rating of 35 kWh per 100 miles; driving the car from a grid connected charge station to the next one produces 70% more carbon dioxide per mile than a Prius Hybrid. So why would anyone drive a rechargeable electric beyond the range of renewable fuel powered charge stations? Does the thrill of acceleration outweigh the life expectancy of grandchildren? Or is saving a few hundred dollars in fuel cost with a $90,000 (before subsidy costs) car the motivator? Imagine the alternative benefits of powering a $25,000 hybrid with natural gas or saving the equivalent of all transportation emissions with better home insulation. Are we wasting precious resources by developing infrastructure for rechargeable electric vehicles? Remember that government subsidies are paid for by us. We are not likely to be able to afford reducing electricity grid emissions by 70% for many decades. If we want to green the planet, resources spent on long range REVs simply delay the process. We can have more fun with fast, long range REVs but pay for it with life span reductions. Hmmmmm!

Dr Andrew Simpson from Australia has done a lot of work on this specific topic.

I also remember reading (but can't find the link) that this was very dependant of where your electricity was coming from in the US. Some states had much dirtier electricity than others.

Now if you were in France, your electric car would produce about 4 times less CO2 per km than the Prius. Thanks to 78% of power being produced by nuclear power plants, and a fair chunk of the rest by hydropower.

I just did some calculations - based on my Diesel TDI (50 mpg), and data on electric cars per Falmers link.

I found my TDI emits about the same grams/KM as a roughly equivalent sized electric car, under electric generation conditions typical in the U.S.

The big kick in emissions cuts from electric cars would have to come from a combined effort to cut emissions from electricity generation - ie, less fossil fuels (particularly coal), more renewable and nuclear.

schony, your argument reminds me of that old statistics joke about the average human having one testicle and one ovary.

By volume, the vast majority of electric cars are purchased on the East and West coasts of the USA where power generation is very low in CO2 output. For example, Vermont is 76% nuclear, 16% hydro and 7% biomass (EIA) for a truly negligible 0.007 lbs of CO2 per kWh. Washington State is 83% hydro and 5% wind for 0.360 lbs of CO2 per kWh.

West Virgina, which is 95% coal powered, is about as likely to become a market for EVs as it is Heineken beer.

Please note that many of us EV owners are motivated primarily by national security interests: ending our reliance on foreign oil and lowering the trade deficit. Additionally, a large percentage of the Tesla and Leaf owners I've met power their vehicles with solar panels. I'd love to see some stats on that!

Puntmeister,
According to the PJM grid website (the grid serving the Washington Metro region) coal makes up a bit less than half of the supply, about equal to the nuclear+natgas share.
That said, my curiosity as to how common solar charged EVs are stems from my experience here in the mid-Atlantic. Washington metro is a fantastic locale for solar electric generation. Most of the other EV owners I've met also have rooftop solar, particularly Tesla owners. At this latitude, a garage roof can entirely power the car.

I have to say, if I were to go the electric car route, I would definitely only do it as part of a solar installation as well. I can't think of anything more satisfying than driving around in a car powered by my own solar panels.

Tragically, I can't afford such a system right now - lost too much money to a fraudulent Chinese company. But that's another story altogether...

This piece was a well-written, very informative news story, including the preceding Economist article on this same topic, “Difference Engine: An innovation too far.” You are right. It is indeed true that Lithium-ion batteries with various types of chemistries have had a checkered, problematic history of device failures involving rare incidents of thermal runaway failures and fires --- rarer-yet events have even involved explosive detonation of battery casings. While highly visible due to intense international publicity, the same qualitative type of Lithium battery failure issues that Boeing’s Dreamliner engineers are wrestling with today have been encountered hundreds of times in earlier incidents --- small and large --- that have occurred over the years with little or no widespread reporting of the unfortunate events by news media.

On the large side of battery failures, in November 2008 the largest Lithium-ion battery pack that has ever been built by anybody --- a 1.2 megawatt, twenty-foot monster for powering the US Navy’s ill-fated Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS) prototype all-electric minisub --- destroyed most of the little submarine in a huge, spectacular fire/explosion that occurred without warning as the ASDS’ state-of-the-art battery pack was being recharged overnight while the sub was resting on dry-dock after undergoing sea trials the previous day off Hawaii. Luckily, no one was anywhere near it at the time, so there were no injuries or loss-of-life. After a subsequent accident investigation, details of which have never been publicly released, the Navy abruptly cancelled the entire ASDS program with no explanation and little fanfare.

On the small side of the Lithium-ion battery incident spectrum, just a few weeks ago South Korean news media widely reported that a man was simply walking down the street in Inchon when the battery pack of a Samsung Galaxy Note device suddenly caught fire and exploded inside his front pants pocket. Unfortunately, he “… suffered second degree burns and a one inch wound on his thigh” according to local news reports. Interestingly, Samsung told reporters that they would, “…not be conducting an investigation of the accident.” One wonders why.

Thus, as useful and important as Lithium-ion batteries may be in a multitude of applications because of their intrinsically higher energy density (compared to say Nickel-Cadmium or various types of alkaline batteries) and consequent ability to store enough electrical energy to keep portable electronic devices running much longer than otherwise before needing a re-charge, they have a decidedly ‘dark side’ too.

Interestingly, a subset (presently indeterminate) of thermal runaway events in Lithium-ion batteries are the result of a rare and peculiar phenomenon that is cryptically called a “field failure” by battery manufacturers. What is unusual and freakish about this mode of battery failure is that it literally comes out of nowhere in an otherwise perfectly normal, well-performing battery cell, without any apparent warning or precursor signs. Its ‘signature’ is an extraordinarily hot (can be as high as thousands of degrees), very fast burning fire that produces huge quantities of dark, dense smoke. If cells in a multi-cell battery pack are not extremely well insulated from each other, a field failure can destroy (combust) the contents of an entire battery pack --- however large --- via thermal fratricide of adjacent cells.

Here’s the bad news in the context of this Economist article. While Lithium-air batteries presently under development may have substantial advantages in terms of energy density versus today’s Lithium-ion battery technology, in my opinion there is no guarantee whatsoever that such batteries will be entirely ‘immune’ to the risk of catastrophic field failures of individual cells. In fact, R&D conducted by our company on condensed matter low energy nuclear reactions (LENRs) as a possible trigger for some field failures suggests that ANY advanced battery chemistry involving Lithium in any form could potentially be subject to risk of field failures as batteries ‘age’ by going through many, many charge/discharge cycles. Thus, whatever competitive advantages Lithium-air batteries might enjoy in terms of substantially improved energy densities compared to Li-ion technology, I am deeply skeptical that there would be any marked improvement in the frequency and/or severity of thermal runaway fires and explosions. Thus, successful development of Lithium-air battery technology may not necessarily be the panacea that some claim will magically solve all of the Lithium battery safety issues that presently confront us.

Electric cars have failed to catch on? They are selling faster than the Toyota Prius did over the same time period after the initial launch. I traded in my Audi TT in March 2011 for a 100% electric Nissan Leaf and have never looked back.

99% of the time I charge at home on the drive overnight and awake to a 80% full battery each morning for the 24 mile round trip commute to work. The said trip costs £1.20 or $1.80 in electricity @ £0.10122 or $0.1538 per kWh

We can’t use off peak rates as we have a ground source heat pump that provides all the hot water & heating needs but it uses more power than the car & mainly during the early mornings providing hot water for showers.

In the UK regular unleaded Petrol / Gas is currently running at $8 per US Gallon and Diesel is $8.39 per US Gallon. Thus the same round trip commute to work in a smaller & slower Eco Fiesta Gas car costs $8.36 vs $1.80 in my Nissan Leaf.

The UK is a lot smaller country than the US and thus is easier to make a longer journey as the distances between city / town centres is a lot smaller than the US. I have drive 260 ish miles in my Nissan Leaf in one day to visit an old Uni friend for the week. The trip took 10:50 minutes stopping for 3 x 100% rapid DC charges of 1:24 each (80% charge takes only 30 mins) but only cost £2.40 or £3.65 for the initial 100% charge at home as all subsequent rapid chargers are currently free at the moment.

Now you may say almost 11 hours is unacceptable for a 260 mile journey without using the heater. However you must consider that 95% of my journeys (and most of the UK) are under 30 miles a day and 99% are under 100 miles a day. Thus for that 1% of journeys perhaps 2 or 3 times a year I am prepared to accept that massive compromise in journey time. All other journeys (95%) are pretty much as convenient but a hell of a lot cheaper than a conventional internal combustion powered car.

Towards the end of the 2013 there will be around a total of 74 Rapid DC chargers installed in the UK. The 74 breaks down to 39 Rapid DC chargers located at select Nissan Leaf dealers in the UK which are available to use free of charge to Leaf drivers during office hours and a further 35 at other locations around the UK with some accessible 24/7. A map of the said charger locations can be seen on the this link http://g.co/maps/79ymr.

With more rapid chargers say 1 every 50 – 60 miles I think I can bring the journey time from Lancashire to / from Norwich down to about 6-7 hours because I could take a more direct route, drive at 70 mph between chargers and reduce the charge time at each charger by 2/3 by only charging to 80% instead of the full 100%. Nissan have stated up to 365 rapid charges per year will not have a negative effect on battery life. The same trip in a normal gas car takes about 4 hours but costs about $69.33 each way in a 30 us mpg car.

According to Shai Agassi current Li-ion battery tech is not standing still. So if an electric car won’t fit in your lifestyle now in 7.5 year it probably will.

Shai Agassi, the founder and former CEO of Better Place, also touted the importance of the rate of battery innovation during his talk at the Cleantech Investor Summit. He said the

• The energy density of batteries increases 15% every 18 months; x 2 in 7.5 years
• The cost per kilowatt hour decreases 15 % every 18 months;
• The life cycles of the batteries (how many times it can charge and recharge) goes up 15% every 18 months;
• The cost per lifecycle-mile does down 50 % every 18 months.

There was a spot on 60 Minutes a while ago about an Israeli entrepreneur who came up with a quick change battery system for electric cars . It took no longer than filling up and off you go with a fresh battery. Wide spread infra structure and standardization like plumbing parts are the only barriers.

The problem I see with the "batter swap" system is that the batteries are such a high % of the value of a car, and battery quality degrades with age.

Who is going to want to swap their fresh new batteries from a newly bought car for grungy old batteries at the local battery swap station?

Who is going to be liable for replacing the batteries that go bad? (and they will go bad)?

At a minimum, there would have to be an amortized "capital cost" fee, in addition to the electricity fee, at each swap. The stations would then be liable for the replacement. But that only works if all the stations are owned by the same company - otherwise, what swap station will want to take on old grungy batteries, near death, in exchange for new ones?

There areplenty of gas stations everywhere. They belong to many different companies. I, as a customer, can choose freely, from which company I buy petrol.
There are also many battery producers. I may choose freely, whose batteriy I buy. But I can buy many different producers' battries in the same shop.
Why would it be not feasible to have given gas station providing me a replacement of my can discharged battery, with a charged battery of the same producer?
One would only need some easy-to-check and standartized quality-metter of a battery. Or, even better, think of a batter puchase, as a rental, not purchase. Then, you just re-rent it at any gas station.
What you really pay for is an energy that is strored inside, and a minimum quality of a discharge.
And you haev a beautifull market of quality vs price--you pay expencively for a renown mark, or cheqaper for unnown mark. Renown or unnown for its quality (of discharge). Just like we do with everything else.
I see no problem there.
The battery-exchange stations are already there (gas stations). We only need electric cars with easy-to-exchange battery slots.
And an electric car without batteries would cost much less. You need,of course, some initial batter there, but you will only rent it, so it will be much cheaper.
And the problem of disposing of used batteries disapears form consumer minds. Whole problem of a limited life of a battery disapears (have you ever woke-up to the fact, that your petrol car is grounded until you buy a new battery?). Companies will have all the incentives to take care of it. ("With our batteries you never worry....").
And disapearing problems is what we, the consumers like the most.
Just sell electric cars with rented battries, and even 50 miles will do. Or is it 70 miles?
Regards

I would agree with the general idea, there are ways to work out the logistics. I just point out that it isn't obvious or simple.

I think the biggest benefit, and the system most likely of success, would be where you could buy an electric car without the battery. This would lop a significant cost from the car, making it cheap enough to truly catch on with the masses.

Electric cars, ex-battery, really should be cheap to make - cheaper than ICE cars.

Just the same - I still see issue with range. Neither 50 nor 70 miles seems adequate to me. When a range of 50 miles is quoted, is that 50 miles before complete empty, dead stop? Akin to running out of gas in an ICE? Or is it a point where there is still a 'reserve' left?

A car with a 50 mile range is likely to be prone to "running out of gas" - I think we have all run out of gas at one time or another. Its a headache that usually involves walking to the nearest gas-station, and carrying a gallon or two back to the car. The average electric car battery would not be so easy to carry....

There is a vast amount oF energy that is produce ad by humans and other animals daily.......Methane from sewerage and hog or poultry farms......We could clean up the mess and have a nearly free ride to boot.

Hydrogen has very low energy density on volume basis. One liter of liquid hydrogen (@ minus 285 degrees centigrade) has around 10.1 MJ as opposed to 38.5 MJ for diesel. Furthermore most hydrogen in the world still comes from natural gas. Therefore it is very tough for a fuel-cell car using hydrogen from natural gas to beat the overall efficiency of the straight use of natural gas in a car with internal combustion engine optimized to use this fuel. Only hydrogen produced from nuclear, solar or wind power would stand a chance. All this not to mention the necessity to cool hydrogen to the point where it become a liquid, the only state where it contains reasonable amount of energy and also its incredible ability to “leak”. But this is not the heart of the question concerning electric vehicles. The most cited reason for not adopting a battery powered electric car – poor range and too much recharging time – is not an issue if we review how to store and use electric energy. In the very beginning of the petrol industry in the early 20th Century, certainly a lot of people dismissed the chance of cars powered by it due to the acute lack of “refueling petrol stations around the world”. In my view the future will belong to “refueling” stations that will provide “recharged batteries”. For this all automobile kingdom will have to be serviced by only three sizes of standard li-ion batteries: one small for sub-compacts; one medium for, medium cars; and one large, for large automobiles. Each size will have the same dimensions, the same anchoring points and the same connectors so cars can exchange freely from discharged to recharged batteries in one or two minutes. The “battery station” will be responsible to recharge the empty units the customers leave at the station while driving away with freshly recharged ones. The owner of any car will earn the rights to a battery when he buys his new car. This ownership gives him the right to exchange batteries as long as a battery of that type is expected to last. After this period (let’s say 10 years), if he still uses the same type of car, he has to buy a new “right” to use that type/size of battery. Finally, the recharging station, wit its sizeable stock of batteries, can in some situations be used by the electric grid as a peak-shaving resource, stabilizing tool, etc. This is how I see the future of electrics before something better than li-ion batteries appear on scene.

I vaguely recall this method has already been implemented in Scandanavia somewhere.

I think it would fly in small markets (such as Scandinavian countries....), but I'm not sure how well it would do in the huge, diverse U.S. market.

You have to consider different "filling station" companies would only want to swap their own batteries - Exxon exchanges Exxon batteries, Shell exchanges Shell batteries....no company is going to want to take on, and thus be responsible for, another company's batteries.

But brand is not a problem because "Shell" batteries will be completely identical to Exxon, BP, Total, Chevron..batteries except for the labels on them.....someone has to give for a system to work. In Brazil we are served by propane/butane steel containers of different providers and brands and the consumer can freely exchange the service it contracts. I may have an empty container from 'Ultragaz' and order a new one from 'Liquigaz'. The later's delivery thruck just brings a recharged one and takes Ultragaz's empty one. It is a gentlemen's agreement.

During the winter there are many stories of cars being trapped on expressways for hours by snowstorms . During such an event, the ability of your car's heater to keep you from freezing represents a major advantage. Cold as well as range anxiety is a plausible fear.

To travel 200+ miles in an electric car is completely unnecessary for over 90% of passenger car travel. Most trips are way under 30 miles.

The selling to Americans of cars they don't need is one of the main reasons that the US consumer 1) is in hock to there neck, 2) waste more gas/capita than any other major country in the world, and 3) live a great % of their life in traffic.

Look the the SUV and trucks Americans drive. THe vast majority never see a dirt road or ever haul a heavy load. Yet suburban housewives drive these gas guzzling behemoths to malls and soccer games. A complete waste.

Most car trips could easily be done with a 50 mile range electric car. That is what the discussion of alternatives to the combustion engine should concentrate on, no a direct competition to Amercan's muscle car fantasies.

Most trips could easily be done with a 50 mile car, true. But not all. And nearly all car owners prefer the flexibility of greater range. A gasoline car has nearly unlimited range, given fueling options along the way. But an electric car not only requires more frequent charging stops; each stop requires far longer to recharge than a gas tank takes to refuel. The preferred recharging time for an electric car ranges from 8 hours (using a home 220v station) to 25 minutes (using a specialized 460v station). Requiring 25 minutes to recharge after 1 hour motoring is something almost no one will choose of their own free will.

So it comes down to preventing people from selecting what they believe is best for them, and dictating instead what you think is best. I'm sorry, but that is the very opposite of freedom. It's a tyranny that will affect the everyday lives of billions.

Most car trips are, true. But I would also argue that at least several times annually, people use their cars to drive substantially farther, say for a vacation or visiting family over the holiday. Not being able to use your vehicle for both purposes is a serious downgrade; I'm a big electric car supporter, but the 50 mile range cars are not a realistic replacement for petrol engines.

Economically that doesn't make sense with current prices. Why pay more for a EV, then pay hundreds of dollars to then rent another car for longer trips, when currently you can buy a combustion engine vehicle for less that can handle both duties?

A structural market solution would be to provide a significant market incentive for people to buy the energy efficient electric car they need for their daily commute and provide a significant break on the rental of a petrol or hybrid vehicle for a suitable number of times/periods during the year. I've known people buy an expensive large carrier which costs a lot more to start with, costs more to run/maintain and is harder to park, just so that they can use it for a known once, twice or three times a year trip. The amount of money they spend just on buying the larger vehicle would easily pay for the hire on the known journeys even without taking the running costs into account.
Most people just don't run numbers very well, and get all tied up with emotional attractions without realising how much money it's costing them.

It may not make sense economically -- but economies depend on having a planet on which it is possible to do business. Long trips are often away from your home region, so renting is the only option; the train works pretty well for many inter-city business trips; and many people rent for vacations anyway as they do not want to have to worry about, or put miles on, their own vehicle. You really don't need a personal vehicle that is capable of 500-mile journeys.

It will take time but once you have driven an electric car, there is no going back. The acceleration, the silence, the reduced operating costs. All you have to do is to watch the adoption rate of taxi drivers and extrapolate.

In the days not too long ago, when gasoline powered vehicles began to appear, they were also considered by most as fancy objects that were less economical, slower and mechanically unstable (Breakdowns), compared to the dependable horse and horse powered vehicles.

As the technology behind oil powered engines progressed, oil powered engines not only overcame it's initial inherent shortcomings compared to vehicles driven by the horse but also silenced forever the proponents of four legged power. Then era of the petroleum powered world began to take shape. Petroleum power almost completely replaced animal powered vehicles and continues till today!

With the recent commercial introduction of these electric / hybrid vehicles, albeit with their teething shortcomings, they may have just ushered the world into such a new era....

Electric cars appeared not long after gasoline cars did, at the beginning of the 20th century. They've been in constant use since, and their technology has improved the whole time. But they are still far, far behind gasoline cars. And gasoline cars continue to improve.

It's the energy issue. A kilogram of gasoline has 70 times the energy of a kilogram of lithion-ion battery. And it's about 100 times cheaper. Those numbers create an insuperable barrier to widespread adoption of electric cars.

Batteries are nice, capacitors are nicer. Capacitors charge much more quickly and don't "wear out". There are several companies working on ultracapacitors and some of it is rather promising. If EEStor actually brings theirs to market anywhere near their claimed energy density it will be a real game (and world) changer. If it's real (still in development, but some promising 3rd party testing has come out recently and both Lockeed Martin and Kleiner-Perkins have invested in it) that is.

Capacitors leak charge constantly. They are considered suitable for short-term storage (collect some energy for a while in a capacitor, and then discharge it for a short-lived, high energy burst) but not for holding charge for hours, much less days.

There are fuel cells, too. Along with flywheels, compressed-air powered engines, biodesiel, cellulistic ethanol, and the rest of technologies that have been proposed, researched, proven at prototype level but never made economical enough for an industry that manufactures 50 million vehicles/year. We'll keep trying, but it's proven fiendishly difficult to unseat petroleum as a fuel. It turns out, the stuff is great for the job.

You're apparently not up to date on the latest ultracapacitor research. They're not even as leaky as batteries, and the technology exists to discharge them slowly instead of all at once.
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The only hurdles are charge density (EEStor and others such as Penn State and Stanford are getting there) and safety (so it doesn't explode if breached). The EEStore project looks a bit like a superconductor (which can store huge amounts of energy along with its transmission awesomeness) when you look at the chemistry of their material (similar to some high temp superconductors).

As everybody has implied , all that current electrical vehicles have done is shift the pollution to elsewhere .
Fuel cells may be the answer in the future . One parameter that is never discussed , even less by politicians , is the city problem. Most vehicle pollution occurs in cities , why do we need cities today with modern means of communications , its crazy to get masses of people into one small area everyday .Except the fact that for politicians and civil servants its easier to have everybody crammed into a smaller area , and better for taxes etc .

Current electric vehicles do not necessarily shift polution elsewhere. I have signed up for 100% wind-power sourced electricity at my house, so if I did all my charging there, you could still reasonably claim very low to no emissions. Additionally, there are benefits to "shifting" that polution elsewhere: A natural gas-fired electricity plant that operates at 85% efficiency is far better than burning gasoline locally at 25% efficiency. Best yet, though, would be a fuel-cell powered local generator at my house, but for now charging the cars using low emissions electricity sources is the best we can hope for.

Not only that, but to deliver gasoline to each station requires heavy trucks that burn their own fuel and create their own emissions. Think about taking that fleet off the road and the emissions (and wear and tear on the road) it would remove.

Electric power plants can be much more efficient and less polluting than running a gas engine. It is localized pollution that can be dealt with on a high tech level. Also think of the gas powered lawn mower or leaf blower both of which ate noisy and dirty spewing dirt all over suburbia. Wouldn't it be better to go electric?

Electric power plants can be much more efficient and less polluting than running a gas engine. It is localized pollution that can be dealt with on a high tech level. Also think of the gas powered lawn mower or leaf blower both of which ate noisy and dirty spewing dirt all over suburbia. Wouldn't it be better to go electric?

All good points, and additionally there is a significant loss of energy in transmitting that electricity from the plant to the end user.

Here is something else I don't understand: With the cleaner burn of natural gas power vehicles, or the high fuel efficiency of TDI desiel engines, why is nobody building a hybrid (a la the Honda civic) using one of those engines as the back up power/charging source? I am sure there are some engineering issues to be delt with, but if you were using CNG at the source, wouldn't that be the conversion with the least inefficiency (and greatly reduced localized polution)?

AS I WROTE ALMOST 20 YEARS AGO
The tree huggers, politically correct bureaucrats and politicians want the industry to offer us “zero emission” cars, at gunpoint if necessary. This is one of those save-the-world proposals that does not have a snowball’s chance of succeeding.
First, electricity is not free, you have to make it, and that means fossil fuels, because those same tree huggers already stopped us from building safe, clean, fission power plants. Instead they have us chase such chimera as hydrogen, solar power (economical only for isolated locations), and fusion (unproven except for nanoseconds), but I digress. Every highway vehicle not tethered to a fixed route must carry it’s own energy supply. We operate in an oxygen atmosphere therefore the vehicle need not carry its oxidizer, only the fuel. This is fortunate, because the typical reaction involves 16 pounds of oxidizer for every pound of fuel! Excuse me, 16 politically correct grams of oxidizer for every politically correct gram of fuel. A zero emission vehicles (ZEV) unfortunately, must carry not only the equivalent of 100 pounds of fuel to make a reasonable trip, but also the 1600 pounds of oxidizer (or other reagent) to react with the fuel, which they then can convert to 1700 pounds of reaction product to carry back to the recharging station.
Now, modern engines are about 25% efficient (35% if they are diesel). The zero emission vehicle since it needs to carry 17 times as much propellant, (fuel plus oxidizer) must be at least 17 times as efficient to compete. Let’s see, 17 times 25% is 425%. That is to say for every kilowatt-hour used to charge the battery the motor must be able to do over 4 kilo-watt hours of work. Am I missing something here? No, I'm not.
I was explaining this to an electrical engineer. He stopped me, momentarily, with “I’m not convinced the same limitations apply.” He was sort of right. In practice, ZEV is even less practical. It takes a thousand pound battery pack to store as much energy as four pounds of gasoline, and it has to carry those 1,000 pounds all the time. (Not yet 17:1, but so far only 200:1)
For the ZEV to hope to compete, it must have a propulsion system that can put out four times as much energy as what we put in. If we could do that, it could charge its own batteries and would never have to recharge, perpetual motion. Not only that, but we could use that technology to build power plants that put out four times more power than the fuel they use. We could then cascade these, each one driving one four times as big and we could power North America with a single candle. Better yet we could just tap a candle’s worth off anywhere in the system to power it. Wow! I hope you see I’m being facetious.
Meanwhile back here on planet Earth, the best fossil fuel power plant is about 42% efficient, so to get that one kilowatt we had to burn the equivalent of 2.3 kilowatts of fuel. Even if the ZEV were perfect, 100% efficient that kilowatt-hour of stored energy would weigh 17 times as much as a kilowatt-hour of stored fuel. So it could compete with engines that were 6% efficient. Look out James Watt, the original one, 1736-1819, steam engine, teakettle, you know.
It would obviously be more productive to look for a way to take the reaction products out of the air, than to attempt to carry them around and reprocess them. We could have huge un-power plants that take carbon dioxide out of the air. Plants that absorb carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into something useful, like, umm... wood.
“Hydrogen,” I hear you crying, “hydrogen is the fuel of the future. Fuel cells can turn hydrogen directly into electricity and the byproduct is pure water. Hydrogen is the answer, not batteries, not only that, but hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, we’ll never run out.”
Here’s a buck, go buy me some. Sure it’s abundant, but it’s all being used. Most of it is busy being water. The rest is tied up in organic compounds, such as, uh, oil. Just like electricity, before you can buy hydrogen someone has to make it and making hydrogen requires … electricity. Yes, hydrogen is the fuel of the future, and it is every bit as promising today as it was 30 years ago.

OK, rudeness is detestable. Agreed. How about math, chemistry, physics in Obenskik's post? You refuse even to address them?
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Hmmm, without calling anyone names, it makes me think you have no serious counterarguments.

Your choice. Just saying. Seems to me a little bit over board, though: I never expected everybody to be nice and pleasant, and always valued facts and ideas (even when I'm of the opposite opinion) more than courtesy.
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But, once again: you entitled to your own approach.

It also helps if you don't premise your entire post on a basic mathematical error.
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Obenskik -- does a car consist solely of a gas tank? Or does it also, perhaps, include a couple of tons of other stuff like an engine block, passenger compartment, axles, etc? Oh it's the latter, isn't it.
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If you include that weighty piece of information in your calculations, you might find that your entire argument about ZEV fuels needing to be >400% efficient is... wrong. The answer (using your numbers for all inputs, except car weight for which I've used 4,000 lb) is 35%.
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Equation: (gas 100 units fuel * 25% efficiency / 4,100 total weight) = (ZEV 100 units fuel * x% efficiency / 5,700 total weight) Solve for x >>> about 35%.

It's clear from paragraph 4 that his entire argument is based on faulty math.
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Basically he is competent at multiplication and his use of percentages indicates some facility with division, but he lacks the common sense to think about the problem and set up the equations properly.
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I have a response to Supramark in this thread that goes through the equations.

I'm using Obenskik's numbers. He says that the HEV must carry its own oxidizer, with weight 1,600 lb, whereas the combustion-fueled car does not bear this burden.
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I don't know whether or not the 1600lb claim is accurate; I'm just plugging his numbers into an equation to see if his conclusion is valid. I made one assumption of my own, which was the car's unfueled weight is 4,000lb, and which comes from a Google search for "average car weight."
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Someone who knows more about things like average car weights, typical fuel tank capacities (weights), engine efficiency in different driving conditions etc., could come up with more authoritative answers for different situations (e.g., highway vs. city, compact vs. SUV). A full answer would probably use calculus to model fuel and oxidizer consumption as the car is driven (thus making it lighter)
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I don't think any of these factors would change my conclusion that HEVs only need be moderately more efficient than Internal Combustion Vehicles, and disproving Obenskik's claim that viable HEVs are a physical impossibility.

I'll try to answer part of your question about Obenskik's chemistry.
He wrote
" because the typical reaction involves 16 pounds of oxidizer for every pound of fuel"
That's not correct. A typical reaction might be

CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O

from which one can deduce that 16 mass units of fuel (CH4 in this simple case, whose molecular weight is 16) react with 64 mass units (two moles) of O2, ie a ratio of 1:4, rather than 1:16.
A more typical hydrocarbon such as octane (C8H18) would give a ratio of 114 to 400, not far from 1:4.

Turning to his physics, where I am no expert, I think that his figure of 42% maximum efficiency for a fossil-fuel based power plant is too pessimistic: cogeneration plants can achieve 80% efficiency, if one counts both heat and electrical power, though that's not quite what he was writing about.

I think, dear Sir, that if you continue to repeat your same nonsense for an additional 20 years, you will certainly be view as feebleminded.

There are obviously costs involved with all sorts of energy generation techniques. One very interesting "revolution" that has occurred in very recent years is the drastic fall in the cost of photo-voltics which now put solar-based systems nearly at parity with goal-generation. In a few years, if solar cost continue to improve, solar may very well be the most cost-effective form of energy generation.

Technology continues to evolve. What was once inexpensive (nuclear) is now unaffordable. What was once expensive (solar) is now very reasonably priced.

I think the electric car concept is exciting, but it needs substantial amount of time to become mainstream or at the most close competitor to gasoline engine driven cars. Secondly, US is such a big country and there needs to be in place sufficient infrastructure to support drivability of electric vehicles. The situation is different in Europe, where there are more densely packed towns than in the US and setting up charging stations would be easier.
I had the opportunity to chat with one of Tesla's employees, and he rightly said there are more people buying tesla cars in Norway and other scandinavian countries than in the US. Does this reflect the mindset of the people living in those countries and how much they care about protecting their environment?